TV Review: The Walking Dead – 3.04 – The Killer Within (SPOILERS)

THIS REVIEW OF LAST NIGHT’S “THE WALKING DEAD”, EPISODE 3.4, “THE KILLER WITHIN”, CONTAINS SPOILERS. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

Oh, T-Dog, we hardly knew ye. Well that’s not true. We knew you were on the show, we just didn’t, you know, know why. Cause you were always in the background. The “black guy” in a mostly all-white cast. You had a name, and of course, it had to be different from everyone else’s. Who else but a black guy would get a name like “T-Dog”? The black guy, of course. If the show ever bothered to fill us in on your background, I must have missed it.

But, amazingly, you made it through the first season. Then the second season. And you even made it through the first batch of episodes in Season 3. Alas, that was all she wrote for you. In this episode, the one where the writers actually bothered to give you anything to do (even if all your dialogue did reeked of having been stolen from Dale), it would be your last.

Of course, if only T-Dog bit it on last night’s “The Walking Dead”, it would have been a strong enough episode, but then “The Walking Dead” had to go and double down.

Bye, Lori.

Unlike T-Dog, we knew a lot about you. Perhaps too much. Who could forget that unnecessarily gratuitous sex scene in the woods with your husband’s best friend in Season 1? I think that episode, more than anything else, paved the way for Lori’s needlessly gory demise last night. Speaking of which, “The Walking Dead” has never shied away from gore, but cripes, last night’s episode (written by show producer Sang Kyu Kim) really jacked up the gruesome levels.

I guess having Lori drop the baby in the midst of a walker rampage wasn’t crazy enough, she and Maggie (Lauren Cohan) had to decide it wasn’t going to happen, and that it would either be Lori or the baby. Lori chose the baby, much to Maggie and Carl’s (Chandler Riggs) dismay. Speaking of which, the kid has really grown up this season. From tagging along and getting shot in the woods to gunning down walkers with cool efficiency. Looks like Beth (Emily Kinney) might have herself a man sooner rather than later.

My reaction to most of last night’s episode? Jaw on the floor, muttering, “Holy crap” more than once.

And then a bunch of other stuff happened over at Woodbury that is kinda boring, though the best moment from the entire Woodbury sequence was when Andrea (Laurie Holden) asked Merle (Michael Rooker) about the Governor and her (apparently formerly racist redneck) fellow survivor confirmed her suspicions, without a hint of doubt, that the Governor was indeed a “good man”, which was enough to make her want to stay. Andrea, it appears, has forgotten that Merle’s definition of what constitutes a “good man” is probably a tad different from her own.

All in all, a crazy, borderline over-the-top episode — just what you want from “The Walking Dead”. This, I think, is the real benefit of having a show on cable TV, even basic cable TV. Every episode can be counted on to have an impact, to do something important that moves the season along because of the limited number of episodes available. Network TV shows, besides being heavily constricted by censors in terms of gore, violence, and sex, has, on average, about 22 episodes to fill a season, which tends to leave a LOT of filler episodes.

So what did you think of last night’s “Killer Within” episode?

Interested in recapping/reviewing future episodes of “The Walking Dead”, or any other TV show of your choice for us? Email me at nix@beyondhollywood.com to discuss.

Here’s a scene from next week’s episode. Hmm? Why is Glenn digging three graves…?